With the backing of deep-pocketed patrons, the French revolutionary movement surged once more. Lives of suffering provided fertile soil for revolutionary ideas to take root and spread.
Before the French Government could react, a massive anti-war, anti-hunger movement began in Paris and rapidly spread across the country.
Anyone who looked closely would discover something interesting: the people who had supported this war most fervently at the beginning and those now most fiercely opposed to it were, astonishingly, the very same group.
They were still the same people; the only change was that their faces bore many more marks of time. Clearly, life had not been easy for any of them over the past year or so.
What had been expected to be a war that would sweep away fallen leaves in an autumn wind had instead turned into a war of national attrition. Vast numbers of French young men had marched onto the battlefield, including their own relatives.
Had victories continued to come from the front, it might have been one thing. But the French army was suffering one rout after another. Hardship, coupled with worry for their loved ones, forced everyone to step forward and oppose the war.
If nothing unexpected happened, then once the armistice treaty was signed, the ones who would leap out in dissatisfaction with its terms and demand punishment for the traitors who had sold out the nation would still be this same group.
All that could be said was that Napoleon IV's government had been unlucky enough to encounter the most ideologically chaotic era in France.
Just as the revolutionary movement was surging like wind and clouds, a large-scale uprising erupted in Rome on September 1, 1891. Unlike any previous anti-French uprising, this one was led by nobles and clergymen.
When the wall fell,